Back in town and going deep

Bear and Socks at home (July 14-15, 2011)

Here you see me trying to get comfortable with the green markers I got out of Wallack's clearance bin. They don't go together as well as the greys do. Speaking of which, I lost my favourite grey marker in Germany. Maybe this is the excuse I need to buy MORE MARKERS? Pant, pant.

Unfolding's Mike Levin always has interesting things to say about the Ottawa art scene. This sober discussion with a reader really got me thinking, especially the part about how once-cheap comics are now a luxury item. I'm always shocked by how dear things are nowadays, despite the fact that my wallet fits into the middle-class tax bracket.

I found a site with approximately one billion architectural renderings (I guess this is the trade term for drawings of buildings?) and they're all beautiful! This Ontario-based company has a cheeky way of attracting web traffic: each image gets labelled with a different art or architecture term (e.g. "Bic pencil" or "3D rendering") to capture search engine traffic. They got me with "Staedtler Mars graphic 3000 duo"!

Today is the last day of my stay-at-home vacation with Ada. As a working mother in a double-income family, every minute of parenting time counts. The only problem is that I don't get a lot of time to work through the challenges: to wit, the Terrible Twos. This week I've thrown myself into it. I've chatted up an old neighbour who runs a homecare, interrogated the facilitator at my Ontario Early Years Centre, watched (and reeled in sympathy) SuperNanny, read the Ottawa pages on Healthy Parenting (what a great city this is!) ... that sort of thing, but mostly, listened to the kid herself. Parenting is the toughest job I have ever done. As someone who has held dozens of jobs, I know what I am talking about!

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Next week I'll have drawings I made in Germany to share, but I want to write some accompanying bits first.